Most observers would agree that Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is a serious person. One newspaper profile last year spoke of her ‘steely determination’. Sir Keir Starmer knew what he was doing when he appointed her to the Home Office brief, the toughest and most unforgiving in Westminster. On Wednesday, while the party leadership was mired in accusations of purging its left wing, Cooper went into bat for Labour’s law and order credentials, promising to ‘take back our town centres from thugs and thieves.’
Efficiency savings are notorious in Whitehall. All too often, they are a triumph of hope over experience
This is an important policy area: crime may not top the list of voters’ concerns – the biggest issues tend to be the economy, housing and immigration – but it has a direct and profound impact on people’s lives, going to the heart of their sense of safety, self and community. It is hard to remember now but for generations it was a weak point for Labour, until then-shadow home secretary Tony Blair declared to party conference that a future Labour government would be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.’
Cooper has correctly identified a widespread feeling that the police simply are not dealing with low-level crime anymore, that officers are increasingly few and remote, and that anti-social behaviour is rampant and unchecked. Pulling no punches, she charged that ‘On Rishi Sunak’s watch, 90 per cent of crimes are going unsolved and knife-wielding muggers, phone thieves and pickpockets can get away with menacing our town centres and neighbourhoods.’ In response, she has promised to ‘rebuild safety on Britain’s streets.’
This is tough rhetoric of which early-1990s Michael Howard would approve. The reality underlying it is more limp. Cooper has previously promised 13,000 extra police officers and community support officers for England and Wales, which is modest enough as there are currently 150,000 police officers. But even Labour’s pledge represents only 3,000 additional officers and 4,000 PCSOs, while the rest of the uplift will come from new officers already hired by the current government and an increased use of unpaid, part-time special constables.
The resources backing this up are also dubious. Labour claims the increased police presence will cost £360 million, and that this can be found by more efficient purchasing of police equipment. ‘Efficiency savings’ are notorious in Whitehall: they are superficially painless and allay fears of higher taxes, but can be frustratingly elusive and return much less revenue than expected. All too often, they are a triumph of hope over experience, effectively a politician saying ‘I don’t know how we will fund this policy but I’m sure it will be fine.’
This is not good enough. Cooper has identified a genuine and serious problem, which will strike a chord with many voters. She pointed out that mobile phone theft has nearly doubled in two years, that pickpocketing has risen by more than half and that knife crime and robberies have risen. But the policing minister, Chris Philp, countered that the government had recruited ‘record police numbers’, deploying 20,000 additional officers since 2019. If he is right, it suggests that simply increasing the number of police officers is not sufficient.
What would make a difference? Cooper has vowed to run a ‘hands-on Home Office’, whatever that might mean. Six months ago she accused Suella Braverman, then Home Secretary, of ‘attempting to rip up the operational independence of the police’ and said that the police ‘have to follow the law and the evidence, whatever politicians think, not be the operational arm of the Home Secretary’. How ‘hands on’ can she consistently be?
It is true that the collapse of neighbourhood policing has had a corrosive effect on public confidence as well as on law and order itself. The problem, however, lies not just in personnel numbers, but in infrastructure. Half of all police stations have closed since 2010, as the public are encouraged to use online services. But the police need to have a visible and identifiable footprint in communities.
There is a cultural or behavioural problem too. The Metropolitan police has admitted it is ‘unrealistic’ to expect the force to respond to every incident of shoplifting, but a survey by the Coop suggested that 71 per cent of reported retail crime was not investigated. That has engendered a catastrophic collapse in confidence in the police. At the same time, a constant drumbeat of anecdotes about the police’s ‘woke’ priorities simply undermine the reputation of law enforcement even further.
The Labour party is terrified of major spending commitments, and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has now ruled out increases in income tax, National Insurance and VAT. That may be politically expedient and even fiscally prudent, but it also means that the promise of a transformative policy like cracking down on ‘thugs and thieves’ sounds distinctly hollow
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